India’s Supreme Court on Thursday deferred a high court ruling on a bitter religious dispute that had posed a major security headache ahead of the crisis-hit Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
The high court in Allahabad in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh had been due to rule yesterday on a long-standing ownership struggle over a religious site in Ayodhya, where Hindu zealots destroyed a mosque in 1992.
However, the verdict was postponed for at least a week after the Supreme Court said it would hear a private petition requesting more time for mediation.
PHOTO: AFP
The next hearing on the petition was set for Sept. 28.
“We will try and tell the court the matter should be deferred further and that parties involved in the dispute — the religious leaders — should be asked to sit and solve the matter amicably,” Mukul Rohatgi, a lawyer for the petitioner said.
“This issue is not about 10 or 100 people. It involves millions of people and there should be representation from all the concerned parties,” Rohatgi said.
The razing of the Babri mosque in 1992 triggered some of the worst communal violence since the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947.
More than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the rioting.
Since then, the 19-hectare site has been cordoned off with barbed wire and steel fencing and guarded by troops.
Hindus say the mosque had been built by the Moghul emperor Babur on the site of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu warrior god Ram.
There had been deep concerns that yesterday’s scheduled high court ruling could spark widespread unrest, and 200,000 police, paramilitary and other security personnel had been deployed across Uttar Pradesh as a preventative measure.
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